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Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Astropia

The other day I received a comment from one Astropia. As per usual when someone new makes their presence known, I click on their link to learn more about this person, who they are, where they're from and what might've brought them to The Warlock's Home Brew.

Astropia turned out to be quite interesting. At first I wasn't sure if this was an actual RPG or Movie or TV Show or combination thereof, but whatever it was it looked very interesting. I mean, gangsters, RPGs, Comic Shops, and live fantasy action! How can I not share this with all of you? Apparently it's one of the top grossing films from Iceland.

2 comments:

Yes, it's a movie, and my only connection with it is that I work for the DVD company that had bought the license for Germany. I have no affiliation with the original makers.

I described the movie a few days ago on the blog, Adventure Materials (http://adventurematerials.wordpress.com/2010/02/28/magic-the-gathering-rant/), using these words:

[The blog you saw] is a kind of “Making of” of the translation of the Icelandic romantic comedy movie, Astrópía. I work for the company who published the German DVD.

Since the movie has a strong RPG theme (it tells the struggles of a Paris Hilton-like girl who finds a job in an RPG shop), and I am a gamer (and former game store owner), I offered to oversee the translation process (in order to keep all gaming jokes and references intact).

I also thought that non-gaming customers of that very mainstream-y comedy film might be interested to try their hand at this strange hobby, so I wrote an introductory RPG (of which you see sample pages, evolution of the character sheet, and cover in the blog) that we included as a short, 16-page booklet (plus PDFs of the quickstart rules for Das Schwarze Auge, Shadowrun, and Call of Cthulhu that the German publishers of said games provided us with).

It was a streak of luck that this movie ended up with a company where the marketing guy (me) is a gamer himself...

I can’t believe that this movie has not received an English translation yet. It’s a very funny MAINSTREAM comedy (think: Sex and the City meets High Fidelity meets The Gamers) that doubles as the best introduction/advertisment for the RPG hobby we could possibly hope for.

The way our hobby is portrayed is flawless – it’s funny without being too geeky and secret-handshake-y (like The Gamers), and the director uses a very subtle technique to make the gamers more sympathetic as the movie progresses: At first the gamers look and act very stereotypical – almost weird, reinforcing every cliché there is. So mainstream viewers can laugh about them, feeling secure and revel in their prejudices about Trekkies and gamers. But subtly the gamers “morph”, their clothing gets more “normal”, their makeup changes, they talk about other interests than just movies and games – and in the end of the movie it is all the other normals (especially the ex-boyfriend of “Paris Hilton”!) who have acted weird and strange.

I did a few posts on the bonus RPG (that will not be included in the US release) on the RPGsite: